


Fear of the Heart

by acme146



Series: Fading Scars [22]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Boggarts, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Old fears, Remembrance, Teddy is awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-08 03:40:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12855966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acme146/pseuds/acme146
Summary: Harry's gone to bail Teddy out of one of Slughorn's projects. But there's something unexpected in the closet...(and no, it's not that Teddy's genderqueer, Harry knows that already)





	Fear of the Heart

**Author's Note:**

> “Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.”   
> ― Wallace Stegner, The Spectator Bird

                Harry loved his godson dearly, but there were times when he wanted to strangle the lad.

                This was one of them.

                “Teddy Re—”

                “Harry, don’t use the full name—”

                “Teddy _Remus Lupin_ , what on earth have you gotten into?”

                Teddy grinned sheepishly, hair fading to a pale blue as he shuffled his feet.

                Harry rubbed his eyes and looked again. No, he was still here.

                Slughorn had never retired the Slug Club, although he didn’t hide the identities of its less illustrious former members anymore. He’d approached Teddy within two weeks of him entering Hogwarts, and against Harry’s protestations Teddy became a regular attendee of Slug Club Meetings. Harry had been worried at first, but Teddy soon made him understand that he liked the old professor.

                “He’s harmless, Harry,” he said firmly after Harry had warned him for the eighteenth time. “He’s not a bad bloke, the parties are fun, and I like being in the Club.”

                So Harry shut up, keeping a watchful eye but letting Teddy make his own decisions. True to Teddy’s description, Slughorn had been very kind to Teddy without seeming to ask for much back. It might have had something to do with Teddy’s brilliance in Potions, or his fights against Slytherin discrimination as a Prefect (“my gran’s a Slytherin, and she helped the Order, so shut your face _Smith_!”). Or maybe it was just that they got on well together.

                So naturally, after Teddy graduated when Slughorn asked the future Auror to guard a property he was going to buy for a week in the summer, Teddy said yes. Andromeda agreed to the work and Teddy had gone two days ago. His owl to Harry, headed with _please don’t tell Gran_ , came a day later.

                Now Harry stood in the foyer of an absolute dump, an old manor house abandoned easily thirty years earlier and he could sense the dark magic oozing from the walls. _Damn you, Slughorn._

Teddy still looked nervous. His shirt was singed and his arms were covered in shallow cuts after a lamp had exploded in a burst of fire.

                Harry sighed. “Why didn’t you come home when you saw how bad this was?”

                “Because I gave my word!” Teddy said indignantly, traces of red in his hair. “Professor Slughorn warned me that the place was in bad condition, and that I should stay on the main floor. So I did. I just…didn’t know about all the…the..”

                “Curse remnants?” Harry supplied. “I can’t imagine what the upstairs looks like if it’s this bad down here.”

                His godson looked at him hopefully.       

                “Alright, alright, I’ll stay and sort things out down here.”

                Teddy beamed.

               “I’m not saying I’m letting you stay here alone, mind,” Harry warned. “I want a look upstairs once things are clear down here to make sure there’s nothing horrendous lurking in the bath.”

               Teddy rolled his eyes, but he looked significantly less worried.

               Harry rolled up his sleeves. “Alright, future Auror, where to first?”

               Teddy nearly skipped as he led the way into what must have been a drawing room, nearly bare of furniture. “There’s a cabinet in here that’s acting odd,” he reported.

               Harry approached the ancient-looking cabinet with caution, knowing that Teddy’s definition of ‘odd’ was other people’s “freakiest-thing-I’ve-ever seen”. The cabinet seemed normal—

               Until, with an almighty bang, it leapt three feet into the air and came down again, shaking the creaky chandelier.

               Harry drew in a deep breath. “It’s a Boggart, Teddy.”

              “Do you think so?” Teddy asked. Harry shot him a look, but his godson, for once, was not being cheeky. “Boggarts tend to move more often, don’t they?”

              “Yeah, but this one’s been cooped up probably since before this house was vacant,” Harry reasoned. “It’s probably tired. And hungry.” He shucked off his travelling cloak. “Right, get out.”

              “What?!”

               “I’m going to take care of it, I told you.”

              “It’s just a Boggart, why can’t I watch?”

              “Teddy, my Boggart is a Dementor.” Harry watched as Teddy realized exactly what that meant.

              “Will it…will it feel like one?”

               “Your dad taught me how to fight Dementors using one,” Harry said quietly. Teddy blinked, and his eyes were briefly hazel, identical to his father’s. “So yes, I imagine it’ll still be quite like them. Go on outside and wait for me to call you, okay? I’ll be fine.”

                Teddy didn’t protest this time, he just turned and left the room.

                Rolling up his sleeves, Harry drew his wand  and approached the cabinet. He counted to three, then waved his wand. The cabinet door swung open, revealing…nothing.

                Harry frowned, arm tense and at the ready. But the room didn’t get cold, no cloaked figure appeared, and the room remained empty.

                Harry reached forward tentatively and swung the cabinet door shut, growing more puzzled as the door closed again with no resistance.

                _“_ Harry Potter.”

                Harry  whipped around, wand at the ready. A tall, thin, cloaked figure stood between him and the door. Harry stared, horrified at the pale face, eyes burning red and a smile curving lips under slitted nostrils.

                “Voldemort,” he whispered. “That’s…this is impossible…”  
                Voldemort’s smile grew wider. “Impossible in the house of my forefathers? Harry, you must know better than that.”

                “You can’t be here. We destroyed all the Horcruxes!”

                “All the ones you knew about,” Voldemort replied, stepping closer.

                Harry raised his wand.

                Voldemort sighed. “I thought you were more intelligent, Harry. Why do you think that will work this time?”

                Harry’s hand clenched around his wand, mind racing. If there had been another Horcrux…if they’d missed something…there were still Death Eaters on the run, he still hadn’t managed to catch them all…

                Voldemort inclined his head only slightly. “There, now you’re catching up.”

                “I’ll stop you again,” Harry snarled. “I’ll kill you!”

                “Will you do it before I kill your children?”

                Harry went pale. There was a dull echo in his ears, his children’s names over and over again. _James, Albus, Teddy, Lily, Albus, James, Lily, Teddy…_

“Four lives,” Voldemort whispered, stepping even closer, that horrible smile still on his face. “Four lives for eight Horcruxes—not a fair trade, I’ll admit, but it’s a start. Your wife, too, and your friends, their children…you won’t stop me in time. You can’t save everyone, Harry Potter. And I will make sure you lose everything, just as I lost everything.”

                “No,” Harry whispered.

                “The Boy Who Lived, with a family who will die.”

                “No!”

                “ _RIDDIKULUS!”_

Harry watched, stunned, as Voldemort briefly turned bright pink before exploding in a shower of sparks. Teddy stood in the doorway, breathing hard, eyes wide with shock. He took a step forward.

                “Harry?”

                Harry didn’t answer him. His lungs were burning but he couldn’t get quite enough air into them, his vision was blurred and _it was a Boggart it wasn’t real it was a Boggart it was a Boggart…_

“Harry!”

                Harry stumbled and suddenly Teddy was in front of him, hands on his shoulders. “It’s alright Harry,” he soothed. “It was a Boggart.”

                Harry choked on a sob and grabbed hold of Teddy, hugging him as hard as he could. He tried to explain how relieved he was, that he would never have let Voldemort touch him anyways, that Teddy would be _safe_ , but he couldn’t speak. Tears were running down his face and he was so _ashamed…_

                Teddy was hugging him back tightly, blue hair brighter than usual, probably trying to comfort him. Harry tried to let go three times before he finally managed it, although he kept his hands on Teddy’s shoulders. “Sorry, mate,” he whispered.

                Teddy looked up at him, still a bit shorter despite the growth spurt. “Don’t apologize, Harry.”

                Harry shook his head. “Your Dad…” he took a deep, shuddering breath. “Your Dad would be ashamed of me for that.”

                “What?! Why?” Teddy’s indignation would have made Harry laugh if he wasn’t trying so hard not to break down.

                “He thought…he thought my Boggart would be Voldemort,” Harry explained. “When he found out it was a Dementor he…he thought it was wise. That being afraid of fear was better than being afraid of…of one person.”

                Teddy shook his head. “Harry, that was years ago!”

                “And what, I should be more afraid of Voldemort now?” Harry asked .

                “Well, yeah, of course you would be.”

                Harry frowned, his breath coming a bit easier as he focused on Teddy’s question. “What do you mean?”

                “You met my Dad when you were in third year, right? That was before Voldemort came back—you barely knew him then. Of course it’s better to be able to be afraid of real, concrete fear than a wizard you knew was dead!”

                Harry saw his point. “But now—”

                “But now,” Teddy interrupted, “you’ve fought him, and he was horrid, and of course you’d be afraid he’d come back.”

                “I never thought about it,” Harry said. “I never…I never considered that as a possibility.”

                “Of course, but you’re a Dad now too,” Teddy said. “It makes sense that you’d be scared of someone that hurt you bad, hurt your family bad…he would kill your kids, wouldn’t he?”

                Harry pulled Teddy close again, resting his chin on Teddy’s head. “He’d hurt you all,” he whispered. “And I’d try to stop him, you know that, but…”

                “You’d stop him,” Teddy said, voice muffled. “You’re brilliant Harry, you’ve had loads more practice since you last fought him.” 

                Harry tried to smile. “Thanks, mate.”

                “He’s not back, Harry. And you’d fight him if he was. You wouldn’t be like stupid Fudge.”

                Harry did laugh that time. “I should hope not.”

                They stood together for a while in silence.

                “Harry, he said…he said four.”

                “Hm?”

                “Do you and Ginny have something to tell me?” Teddy asked, looking up at Harry with a smirk.

                “No, I’ve got four kids already,” Harry corrected.

                Teddy looked at him hopefully and Harry sighed. “Teddy, we’ve been over this before, haven’t we? You’re just as much my son as James or Al, blood or not. And you know Ginny feels the same way, don’t be thick.”

                Teddy laughed, ears turning pink. “I mean…I suppose you’re right, I just…other people don’t always see it that way.”

                Harry rolled his eyes. “Slughorn, right?”

                Teddy shifted. “He’s just…mentioned in the last few months that I’d make my dad proud, but I knew he wasn’t talking about you. I wondered, since I was older now…”

                “You’ll be my kid as long as you exist,” Harry said firmly, “there’s no age limit on that.”

                “Thanks Harry,” Teddy said quietly. He stepped away and grinned. “You know that you’re as much my dad as Remus Lupin, right? Blood or not?”

                Harry smiled. “I know. That’s exactly why I’m grounding you.”  
                “What?!”

                “You’re staying on this level and I’ll go upstairs and see if there are any more damn Boggarts or other whatsits. If there are only whatsits I can deal with, you can stay. If not, I’m calling your Aunt Hermione and she and I will sort this out, and I’ll wring Slughorn’s neck.”

                Teddy threw his hands in the air.

                Harry just laughed and walked past him. He paused at the door. “Why did you turn…Voldemort pink?”

                Teddy shrugged. “Pink’s a funny colour.” He demonstrated with his hair.

                Harry stared at him, so much Remus and Tonk’s son for a brief second, but then Teddy blinked and his eyes took on a familiar green as if he knew what Harry was thinking.

                “Don’t move,” was all he said. “If you hear screaming go for your Aunt.”

                “Yours or the monsters'?”

**Author's Note:**

> I know this is early, but tomorrow's my birthday and between school, work and party I won't have any time to post! Next week will be back to Wednesday :)   
> Cheers,  
> Acme


End file.
